The Green Party's Defection Deluge: When Political Homelessness Meets Ideological Chaos.
Five Brent Labour councillors defect to Greens as Labour renames Islamophobia to anti-Muslim hostility. How 6.5% achieved institutional capture. Published: December 15, 2025 | Reading time: 5 minutes
You’re drowning.
A boat appears.
You climb aboard.
That’s what five Labour councillors did this week. Harbi Farah, Iman Ahmadi-Moghaddam, Mary Mitchell, Tony Ethapemi, and Erica Gbajumo - all jumped to the Green Party before next year’s May local elections.
Same week, Labour renamed “Islamophobia” to “anti-Muslim hostility.”
Two stories. Same problem.
When you can’t solve it, rebrand it.
Different boats. Same leaks.
Tree-Huggers to Protest Coalition.
The Green Party. Founded in 1973. Environmental protection. Climate change. Renewable energy.
Not anymore.
Palestine activists. Trans rights campaigners. Anti-capitalist revolutionaries. Open borders advocates. Extinction Rebellion. Stop Oil blocking motorways.
Every protest group Labour abandoned found refuge in the Greens.
The environment? Secondary to whatever shouts loudest at the conference.
That’s not a political party. That’s a coalition of grievances.
The boat’s overcrowded. Nobody’s steering. Notice the water level inside the hull.
Notice the political boat people, crossing from the sinking Labour shore to the Green coastline.
Except let’s be absolutely clear - these aren’t refugees fleeing war zones.
These are councillors with pensions. Voters who’ve never missed a meal. Been on dry land their whole lives. Comfortable homes. Safe streets. British passports.
They’re climbing into overcrowded, leaking boats because the political hotel on their shore dropped a star rating.
No life jackets. Captains who’ve never navigated before.
Sound familiar? Different channel. Same willful blindness. Same inevitable outcome when unseaworthy vessels carry more passengers than they’re designed for.
Everyone’s too polite - or too scared - to point out what you already know: people are going to drown.
They already are.
Before you look away, understand this: Bristol’s just six months ahead in counting the bodies.
Bristol: Six Months Ahead.
Bristol elected the Greens in May 2024.
Within six months, contradictions became impossible to ignore.
Campaigned for 1,000 new affordable homes annually. Sold 1,222 existing council homes. Notice the mathematics.
Implemented East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood despite 54% opposing it. Consultation became performance art.
18 Green councillors walked out during gender-critical public statements. Activist purity ego trumped democracy.
The Bristol boat hit the rocks. Watch everyone else sailing toward the same reef. Watch them insist Bristol was a one-off. Watch them refuse to change course.
I’m documenting the failures in real-time. Whether you want to see it or not.
Labour’s Definition.
Labour’s “anti-Muslim hostility” definition. Here’s the key clause:
“Prejudicial stereotyping and racialisation of Muslims, as part of a collective group with set characteristics, to stir up hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.”
“Irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.”
Notice what this does.
You cannot discuss Islamic doctrine on apostasy, gender segregation, homosexuality, or women’s rights without discussing collectively held beliefs. That’s not discussing people “irrespective of their beliefs” - that’s examining explicitly stated religious doctrines.
The definition collapses the distinction between bigotry against Muslims as people and legitimate criticism of Islamic doctrine.
Labour renamed “Islamophobia” because “-phobia” implied irrational fear.
This new definition does exactly the same thing.
The label changes. The blasphemy law remains. Different paint job. Same sinking vessel.
Understand what happens next.
The 6.5% Question
How did 6.5% achieve the power to get the government rewriting legal definitions?
2021 Census: 3.87 million Muslims in England and Wales. 6.5% of the population.
Compare: Christians (46.2%). “No religion” (37.2%). Hindus (1.7%). Sikhs (0.9%). Jews (0.5%). Buddhists (0.5%).
Only Muslims receive:
Government Working Groups
Legal definitions criminalising criticism of doctrine
Institutional consultation infrastructure
Special press guidance
Sikhs were named as victims in the Working Group Terms of Reference. Then excluded from participation.
Jews face higher per-capita hate crime rates. No equivalent framework.
What principle justifies 6.5% receiving protections denied to 93.5%?
Notice what it actually is.
Precedents of violent response by extremist elements. Institutional unwillingness to distinguish extremists from the broader community.
Rushdie didn’t get fatwas from Buddhists. Charlie Hebdo wasn’t massacred by Sikhs. The Batley teacher isn’t hiding from Hindu mobs.
Obviously, they couldn’t. Different religions. Different structures.
That’s rather the point, isn’t it?
Politicians watched colleagues go into hiding. Saw protests. Observed threats. Witnessed violence.
They calculated: easier to accommodate 6.5%’s demands than become the next target.
A small minority commandeered the ship. The rest handed over the wheel. Now they’re surprised the boat’s heading somewhere they never voted to go.
Before you object, ask yourself: what evidence contradicts this pattern?
Same Problem, Different Rosette.
Five councillors rebranded themselves Green.
Labour rebranded “Islamophobia.”
Surely 6.5% dictating legal definitions, getting Working Groups, receiving protections denied to 93.5% has nothing to do with a systematic power grab.
Just normal politics, isn’t it?
Notice how that sounds when you say it out loud.
Both boats taking on water. Both crews repainting the hull. Both passengers too polite to point out the deck’s tilting.
The first prosecutions under Labour’s definition will show us their future.
When confronted with hard problems, politicians choose rebranding over resolution. Then act surprised when it doesn’t work.
How many councils must fail before people recognise the pattern?
Same surrender to loudest voices and most threatening precedents.
That’s not governance. That’s capitulation with better branding.
Understand what’s coming next.
What Comes Next.
How long before Muslim voters who abandoned Labour dominate Green Party politics?
They don’t need a majority membership. Just organised. Geographically concentrated. Unified, whilst everyone else fights over pronouns.
Muslims represent 39.9% of Tower Hamlets. 35% of Blackburn with Darwen. 34.8% of Newham. Labour lost four seats to independent Muslim candidates in 2024 on the topic of Gaza.
Those voters didn’t disappear.
More refugees climbing aboard an overcrowded boat. Except these refugees know how to navigate. They’re not asking permission to take the wheel.
Notice the incentive structure.
Give it five years.
Watch Muslim candidates win Green selections in Muslim-majority wards. Watch Palestine activism become a non-negotiable policy whilst tree-huggers wonder what happened to climate change. Watch conference votes requiring Muslim ‘Green’ approval. Muslim Green. You know, the next shade to appear on the Dulux paint colour chart. Yes, that one!
The coalition of grievances is getting a well-organised new faction. One that’s already demonstrated institutional power far beyond its numbers.
The boat’s heading in a direction nobody voted for, steered by passengers who were never meant to be crew. Everyone’s too polite to mention it.
Bristol’s six months ahead in the crisis governing league. The demographic shift? Already in motion.
I’m just pointing out what everyone’s too polite - or too scared - to say out loud.
Before it’s too late to change course.
Remember That Drowning Person?
The one who climbed aboard without asking where it was heading?
The Green Party boat is leaking. On fire. Crew fighting over which captain, whilst arguing whether boats are patriarchal.
Labour’s “anti-Muslim hostility” definition? Another boat. Different colour. Same problem.
Nobody’s navigating. Just repainting the hull and hoping you don’t notice it’s still sinking.
Two boats. Both taking on water. Both captains insisting everything’s fine whilst frantically rebranding the lifejackets.
6.5% of passengers ended up controlling who gets lifebelts, which direction boats sail, and which rules everyone follows.
Not through majority vote.
Through precedent. Organisation. Implicit threat of what happens if you refuse.
The rest of us?
Still in the water. Watching. Wondering when someone’s going to point out none of these boats are seaworthy.
I’m just the one saying it out loud whilst everyone else pretends the water isn’t rising.
And it is rising.
Whether you acknowledge it or not.
The Almighty Gob is a well-known blogger who documents institutional dysfunction in Bristol and beyond. Having submitted FOI requests to Bristol City Council since the Green administration took power in May 2024, this work builds on months of documented pattern recognition.